Posts Tagged ‘Ron “The Con” Gould’

At no point in working on HEAT, until about five seconds ago, did I ever think I would have a Dead Poets Society joke in the comic in any context. Mostly because I typically forget that movie exists until it gets brought up in classes.

I use a lot of photo reference to help me draw the moves, and sometimes finding the right reference for what I’m trying to draw is a huge pain in the ass. For example, any time I want reference for somebody standing on the top rope, I pretty much have to try to take those photos myself at live shows, because finding them online is more hassle than it’s worth. Back suplexes, on the other hand, take roughly ten seconds looking at a Japanese wrestling magazine to find references from 17 different angles. I’m pretty sure it would take less effort to find a picture of a back suplex where somebody was on fire in a Japanese wrestling mag than it took me to find reference for the Bossman Slam on WWE.com. And that’s keeping in mind that Wade Barrett’s new finisher is the Bossman Slam. Madness.

I keep writing in flying cross bodies without remembering that they’re actually pretty difficult to draw, particularly the landing. Good job, me. Then again, I recently drew a powerbomb/cross body combination, so compared to that a normal cross body is pretty pedestrian stuff. I also really like the over-the-post isometric angle that I used in the first panel, which ECW used to use on TV in some of their venues. I’m not sure why it didn’t get used more often, as it’s a pretty unique angle compared to the standard wrestling TV shots. At some point during a FORCE Pro Wrestling production meeting I’m probably going to try to convince somebody that we should use it, if we happen to run a venue that supports it.

Speaking of live pro wrestling, if you missed it earlier this week I posted a review of PWA Fruition 2012, which was headlined by Harry Smith defending the PWA Heavyweight Championship against Chavo Guerrero Jr. You can see the match in it’s entirety right here!

On Saturday: I fought the Law, and it ended up in a shape closely resembling a pancake. Then it tried to tag out. I tried to come up with some sort of syrup joke but they all sounded dirty.

Today’s update is early because I’m going to PWA: Fruition tonight, so I’ll be too busy watching Harry (David Hart) Smith defend the PWA Heavyweight Title against Chavo Guerrero Jr to update later on. Look for the show review on that one in the next few days.

It’s surprisingly difficult to find reference material for a guy getting clotheslined in the corner, which seems very strange to me since it happens in pretty much every match featuring a guy over 250 pounds, and it’s not exactly infrequent amongst smaller guys either. It’s also difficult to draw one of the most cut guys in the match as smaller than other people, even though he is. Apparently watching WWE for years has led me to consider muscle mass and muscle definition as the same thing.

Invincinator continues to do cool stuff in the second update of the new weekly schedule, in this case a Daniel Bryan Danielson-style front missile dropkick. I’m not entirely sure why, but I find top rope moves infinitely less difficult to draw than the preceding panels where the guy is standing on the top rope about to leap.

Next Saturday: Invincinator punches everything that moves until his lungs start to hurt.

Aaaand we’re back! The first HEAT of 2012 resumes the Super Max Challenge Cup finals where we left off, with Rod Black having just been tagged in by Uno following an Invincinator body slam.

The Yakuza kick is one of those wonderful but rare instances when the photo reference that I am convinced exists not only actually exists, but it’s where I thought it would be! If I’m recalling correctly it was a photo from one of MVP Yakuza kicking a Japanese guy I don’t recognize in the face during an NJPW match.

Remember, updates are Saturdays only now! If you missed the explanation, scroll down for the blog post explaining the schedule adjustment.

On Saturday: Ron Gould spends roughly 12 seconds in the ring before Invincinator comes back and does something cool.

This page may hold the record for most tags in one strip, which is a record which nobody knew existed or cared about until just now, including me. Relatedly, I can’t really think of anything to say about this particular strip, so instead I will direct your attention to this:

This is one of those pages that features a relatively simple sequence wrestling-wise which turns out to be really hard to do in comic form. In retrospect it probably could have used a few more panels for the dropkick and shoulder tackle spots, but in all I think it turned out pretty well, particularly Vinny’s landing after the shoulder block. I’ve also gotten to the point that I can draw dropkicks without reference, which is nice, since when I started the comic, the dropkicks I drew without it looked like ass. Don’t believe me? Look at the double dropkick from the first Los Gordinflones Negros match.

I think I mentioned this earlier, but Vinny LaGrazo’s face protector is inspired by Cody Rhodes’ recent “undashing” gimmick and, far more obscurely, the face mask that Virgil wore at WrestleMania VIII in a godawful eight-man tag team match featuring the dregs of 1992’s midcard.

The eye-pointing thing that became my favourite joke on this page is something that has been a running joke in my house since seeing Bucky do it in several Get Fuzzy strips in the paper (comics used to come in a thing called a “newspaper.” Jackassy cats are a common character featured in them). It was funnier when Bucky did it because he doesn’t have, y’know, fingers.

My production rate of HEAT pages has ground down to a crawl, but on the plus side I think I’m doing some of the best pages I’ve done so far.

On Wednesday: The other team has to come out before the match can start.

This goes into the category of pages that took forever to draw but take very little time to read. Entrances typically take a while to draw because I always try to make them look different, even when they’re for the same guys. I remember when I drew wrestling comics in elementary school based on WWF and WCW I always drew the exact same entrance: a straight-on shot of the wrestler posing on the stage after coming out of the entry curtain (this was back when RAW still used the classic Attitude-era set with the entry area inset a little bit). That was fine when I was 13, but now that I actually know what I’m doing I like to try to shake it up a little bit. Drawing four separate entrances on one page makes that a little more difficult.

John Bradley leaning in to try to get on camera in the first panel wasn’t planned in the thumbnails, but when I drew the page at normal size I messed up a little bit on Blorg’s positioning and didn’t have enough room to fit John Bradley into a normal two-shot. I sketched out the lean-in a little bit and thought it was a nice visual bit for a page that doesn’t have much of an actual joke.

This speech seemed a lot shorter when it was just a few lines in a WordPerfect document. Then I started drawing and it turned into eleven panels’ worth of speech balloons, which is slightly below the threshold for a page driving me crazy. Seriously, fitting eleven panels on a page is this size is… let’s say challenging. Or maddening. Or idiotic

I don’t really have much else of interest to say about this page, so I’ll mention that I’m thinking about cutting the schedule back to once a week because I’m working six days a week right now. What do you guys think?